It will be interesting to see if the NFL games, especially if the games are not compelling, rate better than The Big Bang Theory.

Perhaps this says this in the link, I didn't read it, but to me this smacks of CBS trying to protect their Thursday night lineup by guaranteeing that nothing strong, like the NFL is up against it. Do they move TBBT to another night?

I noticed this past season that even though I don't pay for NFLN, and even though the channel is blacked out most of the time, I could still get the channel during the games on Thursday nights. I have no idea what's up with that.

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Did you try that for every Thursday game, or just one or two. It's possible that there were games involving your in-market team where the feed was unencrypted because it was also being simulcast on a local broadcast station.

Both those shows were already getting killed by what was on CBS anyway, so it's not likely to make much difference. And while we know P&R is renewed, we don't yet know whether Community will be back or not.

But the prevailing thought is that the other broadcast nets may air reruns, or throw some other shows against the CBS NFL games as cannon fodder, and then save the shows they actually care about to start later in the fall. Especially since they have to air about 17 weeks of reruns or other content anyway, this 8 weeks could just give them an excuse to start their seasons later and have fewer in-season breaks after that.

As much as people (claim to) hate reality shows, one of the major networks should do something like cable did with "Undercover Boss: Abroad" a few years ago. Basically, just show the foreign versions to us in the U.S.

Instead of reruns of the 'main' shows, show some foreign (but yes, admittedly, likely originally in English so will require _limited_ subtitling) reality shows. Even not English, I'd love to see the original show Survivor was based upon, though I realize it's nothing like what Survivor has become.